


II

by christiant



Series: Post-Grief [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 09:38:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2104869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christiant/pseuds/christiant





	II

Mama Disa is quiet at the service, yes, but she is howling and screaming behind closed doors. The Marshall and the President clear out of the graveyard almost as soon as the choir finishes singing Take Me To The King and the body is safe and sound six feet under. They could sense that they weren't wanted.

Especially the Marshall, who'd personally promised Disa Vice that he would keep an eye out for her only daughter while she was so far away from home. 

She had put her head on a table to cry into her arms and I approached her slowly, with a slight fear of being rebuffed like everyone else had been. I was surprised when when she raised her head up at me, actually, and unsure of what to say. 

As long as i'd known her there'd been this awkward, nerdy buffer between us connecting our souls together. What did I call her if not Mama Disa? Who was I to her if not her other daughter?

"Jeanie-Bean?" the sultry, unusually hoarse voice rang out, still musical in its' sadness. 

"Yes, Mama Disa?" my doubt had crumbled at her face, unobscured by Louis Vuitton, she had the deep wells on her face that were my best friend's eyes. 

She took a long, staggering breath and said "You know it wasn't your fault right? I blame everyone who built that damn death trap, and my daughter, but no one has the right to blame you," before lowering her face back into her arms.

I didn't know how to deal with this lack of blame. I'd expected her to hate me, to rage and scream at me for living while her daughter had died. I had walked on thin ice around her for months while Tai was sick and not once had she ever so much as raised her voice (other than to uncharacteristically slap her daughter and ask "what the fuck did you do to yourself"), and it was was plain to see that she wouldn't even now.

The sight of my warrior queen cowed and broken and somehow small at 5'10 was almost too much to bear. How could this be the same woman who'd brought me McDonald's in fourth grade or brought my prom fundraiser cookies. 

The sight of her broke something in me because we were in the same place. 

We were both left without a piece of our souls that Tai herself had stolen from us. 

I could understand her need to hide from the room. They remembered her as a friend or a niece or a cousin (or even, I thought wryly, a lover- the bike girl, Veronica or something, is on the other side of the room), and no one else understood what it was like to have her be a part of them.


End file.
